The Stunt Business

One of the world's primary causes of poverty has vowed to name and shame countries which suffer the effects of poverty. The president of the World Bank is worried about the effects of malnutrition on young children, which can include retarded growth and a lack of the necessary mental flexibility to become competent worker-consumers. Since increasing automation will result in decreasing opportunities for menial slavery, it appears that decent diets are being considered as a last resort so that the president of the World Bank can look at himself in the mirror. The proposed solution is a system of "conditional cash transfers" to mothers of stunted children and the health clinics that support them; which, in the stick-and-bigger-stick mentality of the World Bank's employers, will doubtless translate into yet further withdrawals of resources as punishment for needing them the most.

Listening to Legitimate Concerns

As if the antics of the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble were not enough, Americans have had to cope with a flying visit from Mad Tessie May. The dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK dropped in to New York, where the agenda seems to have been partly to beg local plutocrats not to wreck the English economy on her watch, and partly to meet and make due obeisance to the Governor of HM Prison UK himself. Rupert Murdoch, many of whose humble staff in the British scumbag press share Mad Tessie's interest in eavesdropping, was no doubt happy to congratulate the dead-eyed warden on her appointment; even if there still remain a few personal opinions, such as those of the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty, whereof she has yet to take back control. It remains as yet unclear whether the Governor asked his new minion any indiscreet questions about what Brexit means; or whether he just gave her the proper definition via whatever convenient orifice she may have presented for the purpose.

Laws Are For Losers

Despite the Bullingdon Club's no-nonsense attitude towards such peculiar foreign-influenced whims as expert testimony and equality before the law, certain airy-fairy legalisms are still being permitted to cloud the crystalline simplicity of Britain's taking back control. As befits an administration headed by the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK, the Government has decreed that Parliament has prorogued itself by passing the Referendum Act; that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have no business interfering with British affairs; and that any legal issues involved will be left to the expertise of ministers, without merely legal interference. (The ministerial experts involved, lest anyone forget, comprise an overpromoted Murdoch flunkey and sometime game-show host; a prima donna with a shaky grasp of Irish independence; and the vole-brained former Minister for Werritty.) Naturally, the Government's legal grounds for asserting that it alone can decide what is legal are also purely a matter for the Government; at least in the Government's considered opinion. Nevertheless, a high court judge has very subversively ordered that the Government must now disclose how genuinely, utterly sane and intelligent the dead-eyed warden and her flunkeys really are.

Colónic Irritation

Some historical cleansers in Barcelona have displayed similar ambitions to the recent Rhodes Must Fall campaign here on the mainland. A sixty-metre monument to a Genoese thief, slaver and crank, and to his Muslim-bashing patrons, has been targeted for destruction by a group of councillors, who propose to replace it with a monument to "American resistance to imperialism, oppression and indigenous and African-American segregation", although it is unclear how much of this virtuous resistance originated in Barcelona. They also find distasteful the celebration of 12 October, since it marks the beginning of the American genocide; and a nineteenth-century slaver named Antonio López y López, who eventually bought himself the title "Marquis of Comillas" and whose statue adorns the post office.

Since the glorification of such creatures is itself a part of history, and one whose lessons have hardly been learned today, the replacement of their statues by monuments to more worthy causes seems a dubious enterprise. A more honest and educative approach would be to add new inscriptions giving some indication of the revised historical estimates, so that future generations may see what heroes their forefathers chose, and perhaps partly deduce from that how the world they'll be stuck with came about.

That Ethical Dimension

The Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair has added his own eructation to the belches of righteous indignation over the idea that the actions of British troops might be open to question from the involuntarily freedomised. Both the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK, and the blustering blimp at the Ministry for Wog-Bombing, have already promised every possible assistance to soldiers accused of war crimes, including the kind of legal support for which civilian food-bank users are now expected to pay. The Ascended Incarnation of the Reverend Blair took time out from the Kazakhstan Reformation and the profits thereof in order to bestow the benefits of his own moral perfection upon readers of the Sabbath Barclaygraph. "I do not think this process should ever have been put in place," he anathematised; clearly the man who wanted to impose three months' detention without trial on anyone who wrote things, said things or thought things has lost none of his empyrean disdain for evidence, due process and suchlike judicial inconveniences.

Is There No Rah-Rah in Albion?

Having burned beneath the pitying condescension of Euro-wog ministers a couple of days ago, the strategic mastermind that is the Imperial Haystack has evidently decided to go in hot, heavy and hairy with the willy-waving over Syria. Defining a war crime as something Israel, Saudi Arabia and the USA do as a matter of course, the London Haystack fulminated against the rampant Russian bear, complaining that the forces of civilisation have been "too impotent" in Syria since the late Head Boy's cunning plan to lead 700,000 tame jihadis on a glorious crusade for democracy was voted down in 2013 - in large part because the Head Boy was too busy chillaxing to organise the servants properly. That plan (essentially wog-bombing and rah-rah and erm that's it) was the sort of kinetic response to a red line that the Imperial Haystack could get behind, because in its depth of detail and forethought it rather resembled the way he likes to operate himself. Failing that, the Imperial Haystack blathered about the "dock of the court of international opinion". Apparently Putin will scuttle back into his spider-hole if he feels people don't like him very much.

Name Czech

In April the government of the Czech Republic approved the name Czechia as a one-word name for the country, and a mere five months later the British government's Permanent Committee on Geographical Names has magnanimously ratified the decision. There was apparently some concern that the more factually immune English-speakers might confuse the country with Chechnya, or that historians with a Gove-Johnson degree of sophistication might get it mixed up with the Cheka, or perhaps with a pattern of squares. There were also worries that the name fails to represent Moravia and Silesia, which admittedly could be difficult to squeeze into a single word, at least if it were intended to be susceptible of pronunciation. One name that does not seem to have been considered is Bohemia, which presumably has unpleasant Austro-imperial associations, besides the more relaxed connotations that would have made it an encouraging signal of decadence in a continent of hard-working families.

More Kinks in the Learning Curve

Mere experts are an intransigent lot: pedantically myopic in their obsessive attention to factual occurrences on the present planet, and apparently immune to the moral and spiritual wonders of the far superior world inhabited by Her Majesty's Government. A study by the Education Policy Institute demonstrates once more why mere experts remain unworthy of that alternate world, no matter how much they attempt to undermine its beguiling narrowness, its disciplined, disc-like non-sphericality and the mediaeval charm of its social order. Grammar schools, the study states, do not improve overall standards but rather retard them, and do not help children from disadvantaged backgrounds but rather hinder them; hence the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK and her minions have been saying the thing that is not and making claims based on "nostalgia and anecdote". The experts recommend that the Government abandon its policy, as it will lead to increased social divisions and fewer chances for the non-wealthy: a situation which no imaginable administration of loud-mouthed half-wits and hard-right ideological freaks could possibly wish to see.

Murca Joins the Grown-Ups

Pleasingly enough in these arguably post-imperial times, the campaign for leadership of the free world and the state of Ohio has moved a little closer to the luminous standards of reasonable debate which are routinely achieved here on the democratic mainland. The Trumpster has been bellowing about refugees being a vector for the disease of terrorism, and in support of his claim he has proclaimed that the country has lost control of its borders, that the New York bomber (he hasn't been tried yet, but Trumpster justice is as swift and summary as anything Mad Tessie May could desire) should have been caught in the womb, and that the opposition plans to bring in vast numbers of refugees and spend upon their welfare as large a figure as can be extracted at short notice from the admittedly capacious Trumpster toches. The Trumpster has also proclaimed that refugees not only cause terrorism but also lower quality of life generally, in accordance with the generally accepted religious orthodoxy which proclaims that wages tend to be depressed by migrants and not by tax-dodging corporate fatboys. Our own political masters will no doubt be greatly encouraged to observe the Trumpster and his hydrophobic head-tribble both coming over so mainstream all of a sudden.

Historic Allegations are the New Welfare Claim Forms

Britannia should be dashed proud of having armed forces full of people who do a dangerous job for money and thus do not in the least resemble miners, aid workers or prostitutes, according to Mad Tessie's latest moral eructation. The dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK was lecturing reporters in New York about allegations of murder, abuse and torture having been carried out by the soldiers of Albion during the late crusade in Iraq. Although the Conservative Party does not believe all Iraqis are liars, any more than it believes all immigrants are parasites or all poor people shirkers - or any more than it once believed all single mothers were scroungers, or all gay men were corrupters of children, or all wogs were niggers - the fact remains that some people are abusing the system; which in this case means exactly what that particular fact always means in the Conservative Party, namely that it's time to put the boot into someone. Mad Tessie has vowed to kick out the "industry of vexatious allegations" which, among other things, wants the Ministry of Wog-Bombing to come clean about its orders to the troops on the ground regarding acceptable methods of interrogation. As always, Her Majesty's Government will allow its soldiers' reputations to be tarnished only as a very last resort, viz. when the only foreseeable alternative is the likely exposure of some non-fighting, non-dying, slightly overweight men in suits to the inconvenience of public scrutiny.

Political Science

In a feast of learning to rival Professor Michael Gove's ground-mucking lectures on mathematics, mere experts have once again been set to rights by the inspired blathering of a Conservative turncoat. The parliamentary expenses claimant for the Farage Falange has turned his master's degree in British Imperial History to good use by overturning some misconceptions about the workings of the tides; which, for reasons doubtless having to do with political correctness, militant feminism and the depredations of unreconstructed fuzzy-wuzzies, most scientists seem to think are influenced mainly by the moon. Unfortunately for them, mere scientists rely for their knowledge on the Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica of Isaac Newton, which is written in foreign; whereas the distinguished Professor Carswell has the practical common sense that comes with a constituency by the seaside. The parliamentary expenses claimant for the Farage Falange has, after all, spent his career at Westminster, not in some strange, otherworldly, publicly-subsidised bubble of collective self-regard. Hence, the distinguished Professor Carswell recently, and not at all sycophantically, rated his support for the Falange's new leader at 110 per cent; while Newton, among his many other errors, most likely believed that the percentage of a whole could not exceed a hundred.

My Other Speech is the Nasty One

The dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK seems to think it a good idea to lecture the General Assembly of the United Nations on the perils of migration. Not because she sees the Thames foaming with much blood, or at least not yet; but because she is deeply concerned about the welfare of the migrants, who like many dusky limited-income types are incapable of judging their own interests rationally. It is because so many migrants insist on migrating and subjecting themselves to exploitation and danger, rather than staying at home to be subjected to starvation and wog-bombing, that the beleaguered West has reached its present sorry state. Mass population movements reduce resources and popular support for refugees, however much governments and the scumbag press may try to instil a more enlightened public attitude. The best thing the migrants can do is simply to stop migrating and hope to be liberated by British-made bombs rather than liquidated by foreigner-made ones; or, failing that, they should confine themselves to countries like Lebanon and Jordan, which are more used to having them and where they are unlikely to affect anyone's holiday. In short, the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK appears somehow to have confused the international dignitaries at the General Assembly of the United Nations with the race-baiting rabble of a Conservative Party conference. It remains to be seen how flattered the greasy wogs at the General Assembly will feel by the comparison.

Eye in the Sky

Gavin Hood 2015

In Gavin Hood's rather perfunctory alternate-world fantasy, a terrorist cell is discovered preparing a suicide bombing in a house in Kenya. Thanks to a flying robot beetle, the identities of the culprits are established beyond reasonable doubt, and they are all very high on the counter-terrorism wanted list. A drone strike seems to be called for, but is subjected to a Kafkaesque series of delays, partly because the British government is more worried about breaching international law than about displeasing the Americans, and partly because the drone operators have been zooming around a bit in their copious free time, and have seen some potential collateral damage playing with a hula hoop.

The credibility of these motivations is not helped by the fact that every single character on view is a walking cliché: from the no-nonsense colonel who has been tracking one of the terrorists for the past six years, to the straight-talking general impatient at political red tape, to the new junior minister who apparently has risen through the Westminster establishment on moral qualms, to the dead-eyed American flunkey spouting euphemistic jargon, to the obsessively arse-covering and in one case literally squeaky-buttocked minions of the British wog-bombing establishment, to the Good Africans, to the Bad Africans, to the humble military personnel who must do their emotionally taxing duty and then walk away with a tear in their eye at the price of sending the bad guys to Kingdom Come. Despite BAFTA-bait casting and acting, none of these characters approaches the complexity of the dialogue delivery ordnance in a Tarantino film.

Plot mechanics are efficient enough, but Eye in the Sky has all the depth and uncompromising realism of a newspaper report; and not necessarily the kind of report which, in another surreal touch, the film's politicians worry might lose them a by-election or two. That might well explain this eminently forgettable film's glittering reviews from the journalistic class, which tends to inhabit that same alternate reality: the one where terrorist bombings have no social or political background but where the regrettable errors of wealthy white people must always be indulged to the last nuance, and where the emotional indigestion of the wog-bombers is at least as valid and newsworthy as the sufferings of the bombed.

Break Out the Ginger Beer

It's pleasant to note that a crass attempt by the publishers of Enid Blyton's work to anonymise her for the juniors of the Dan Brown generation has ended in a well-deserved flop. Blyton's books have been perceived as racist and sexist for some time, but it is just possible that children who read them may also read other material which displays a more enlightened attitude, much as readers of the Jew-baiting toady William Shakespeare occasionally find it within themselves to drag their ideas out of the sixteenth century. Equally, the presence of outmoded customs, attitudes and language in a story may sometimes lead the youthful reader to ask questions, consult a dictionary and perhaps even think a bit. Nevertheless, however hideous it may be for children to discover that people did not always think or speak the way they do now, apparently that discovery is less traumatic than seeing their favourite stories undergo a personality amputation.

Justice at Last

After a mere thirteen years or so, the Ministry for Wog-Bombing has proclaimed itself "extremely sorry" over the drowning of an Iraqi teenager who was forced into a Basra canal by four brave young chaps doing a wonderful job in difficult circumstances. The boy was arrested "on suspicion of looting" and subjected to a certain amount of manly due process before being taken to the canal in an armoured vehicle along with three other malefactors. They were all forced to enter the water, presumably in the absence of equipment for the more sophisticated aquatic techniques favoured by MI5 and its American chums; and the boy got into difficulties and drowned while his liberators stood by and marvelled at his ingratitude. The soldiers were tried and acquitted of manslaughter in 2006; but the Ministry for Wog-Bombing has apparently just discovered that, despite the freedomisers' lack of interest in post-liberation planning (except for grabbing the oil ministry and purging everyone who knew anything about running the country), the Iraqis had been so careless as to allow Basra to descend into a state of chaos. There are "grave concerns" about the soldiers' training and the adequacy of the resources available to them; but it remains as yet unclear how many decades it will take the Ministry of Wog-Bombing to recommend appropriate action against the rather wealthy men who placed Britain's heroes in such a regrettable situation.

More Dim Than Devious

It is, of course, the kind of innocent minor mistake anyone could have made. As a member of the Commons public accounts committee, a Conservative junior minister was so possessed with righteous passion over the need to control loan sharks that he leaked a draft report to the biggest loan shark in the country and asked for its opinion. He used his private email address in case some underlings gained access to his parliamentary emails and used them for nefarious purposes. The story was "further complicated", though doubtless quite innocently, by the fact that the junior minister had helped arrange for the loan shark to provide £30,000 in sponsorship to the local football club, and that after the wholly innocent email exchange the chairman of the club made some highly innocent donations totalling about the same to the junior minister's constituency party. Although he had leaked the report to the loan shark and solicited the loan shark's view, the junior minister did not believe that the views emailed him from the loan shark's employees were the views of the loan shark; which doubtless is why the junior minister did not actively seek to ensure that the views shaped the report. He has apologised to his fellow MPs for failing to follow standard procedure in protecting corporate chums from public scrutiny, and may yet receive a two-day suspension despite the mitigating circumstance of his belonging to the Not Particularly Bright Party.

It's Only Money

Although the sneering schoolboy has been replaced by the empty suit, there seems an encouraging continuity at the Treasury when it comes to questions of mere competence. Numerous MPs and their constituents claim that Concentrix, the Government's private-sector boot-boys at HMRC, have been wrongly depriving people of tax credits, while Concentrix are claiming a quiet pride in saving the taxpayer money and a corporate conscience of Blairite lily-albinitude. The Treasury's response has been to shrug the whole thing off with what it presumably hopes is a reasonable facsimile of Osbornomic insouciance. The firm's contract will not be renewed, but it will be allowed to continue its abuses for the remaining eight months of its present employment; and there will be no enquiry, whether because the Treasury is on principle uninterested in how taxpayers' money is spent, or because there are too many post-parliamentary kickbacks at stake. Meanwhile, a flunkey was extruded which promised to focus on resolving outstanding cases, "particularly the most vulnerable" who can be resolved, more often than not, with a snap of ministerial fingers and another nice, thick slice off their incomes.

Think of the Children

Researchers at Bath University have pioneered a technique of producing embryos substituting skin cells for eggs. Mere scientists may be excited at the achievement because it pushes back the frontiers of knowledge about fertilisation and development; others may gleefully anticipate the squeals of indignation from religious moralists at the thought of two men having a biological baby together. Rather than dwelling on such trivial concerns, the scientific editor of Britain's leading liberal newspaper babbles about the possibility of saving endangered species (presumably without needing to bother any more about saving their habitats) and, of course, about that perpetual journalistic concern, the propagation of hard-working families. Given the present self-effacing rarity of the human species on earth, what possible use could there be in a biological breakthrough with no potential to reform non-breeders?

Resignation Letter

I'm officer class and a Brit,
And stout chaps like me never quit,
But representation
Of this population
Is not my rah-rah, not a bit!

With Witney's unwashed, it is true,
I've had very little to do.
I don't see how I'm
Supposed to make time
For all my directorships, too.

A wonderful journey it's been!
What floods and dead badgers we've seen!
What powers of good
We've done al-Saud
And other chaps equally clean!

I've chillaxed my piece of the action,
And now I have limited traction.
Of no further use
And glistening puce,
I might cause a nasty distraction.

My pater, that noble tax-dodger,
Brought me up a fine little bodger.
There's moguls to lick
And beggars to kick,
And sucking-pigs moist for my todger!

Davey Kipperflit

Leave Now, Pay Later

Well, here's a thing: that £350 million battle-bus pledge has suddenly turned up a bit Cleggy. Since the Government seems to be dragging its feet on invoking Article 50, and since everything will simply tumble into place once we do, a new cross-party blathering club has been set up to agitate for as rapid and chaotic an exit as possible. Change Britain would like "continued funding for farming, science, universities and poorer regions of the UK", viz. all the things we get from being in the EU; but their manifesto makes no mention of the famous pledge to spend £350 million a week extra on the NHS. Naturally the Imperial Haystack has joined up; as has the Labour Brexiter Gisela Stuart, who took the standard Clegg-pledger line in a BBC interview: "For me, the priority was the NHS, but you need to be in government to actually implement that." The thing would seem to be, then, that her actual Brexiter allies who claimed they could actually implement it, such as the Imperial Haystack, are not actually in government at the moment.

The Order of Love

Repentance and atonement are central to Christian doctrine, and in the ethics of the Church of Rome they sometimes rank very nearly as high as worldly wealth and the control of non-priestly genitals. Doubtless this explains the Catholic Herald's refusal to publish an article, written by a victim of kidnapping and torture in response to some pious musings by Sir Mark Allen, who was head of MI6's counter-terrorism unit while MI6 was conniving at kidnap and torture. The writer of the riposte was Abdel Hakim Belhaj a Libyan politician and an opponent of the Reverend Blair's chum Colonel Gaddafi; although, to be fair to his reverence, their chumhood took place while Blair was still pretending to be a Protestant. Belhaj was arrested in Thailand in 2004 and bundled off back to Libya, where he received the expectable welcome from the régime. After the arrest Sir Mark Allen gushed to the head of Libyan intelligence: "This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over recent years." Whether because good Christians don't take orders from infidels, or because repentance is for little people, Sir Mark Allen has not noticeably atoned; and the Catholic Herald, at least, need fear no martyrdom.

Defending Democracy

Members of a parliamentary select committee reporting on British sales of weapons to Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East have been frustrated in their noble work of watering down criticism and ensuring business as usual. A strongly worded call to suspend export licenses and investigate the precise extent of the Saudi wog-bombers' law-abiding restraint would probably give pause even to Mad Tessie May and the blustering blimp at the Ministry for War and the Colonies. Therefore, it is alleged, a number of committee members withdrew from a meeting on Monday night so that a quorum would not be present. The chair of the foreign affairs select committee, Crispin Blunt, has been squealing for Parliament to hire private investigators for the purpose of hunting down and neutralising anyone attempting to inform the public of such petty political chicanery. After all, the sale of weapons to the head-chopping House of Saud is, according to Crispin Blunt, an "instance of the greatest seriousness involving life-and-death issues and the employment of tens of thousands of our fellow citizens", doubtless not excluding one or two parliamentary kickbacks from the arms industry.

Tory Wets

The effects of the Bullingdon Club's vandalism of the country's flood defences have been reviewed in an official report, and the gormless Andrea Leadsom has been duly reminded that climate change exists and that placing large parts of the landscape under water, other than the bits designed for that purpose, can occasionally interfere with the smooth running of the country. Twelve and a half million pounds have been allocated for temporary defences to try and shore up whatever remains after the Bullingdons halved local authorities' flood funding last year. Ben Gummer, the Minister for Being the Son of a Former Minister, said that he expected telecom companies and moisture distribution profiteers to work towards ever closer union in pursuit of socially responsible goals, but does not appear to have made clear what incentives are being provided for this unbusinesslike crypto-Europeanism. The gormless Andrea Leadsom, or the spad who writes her press releases, has at least realised that flooding happened last year and that the review makes some recommendations.

Bob the Builder

Mad Tessie's Minister for Wogs Out has been having a bit of a blah and rah over the Trump-lite option for cockroach control, which is about to begin in Calais. Electrifying the fences would cost too much; hiring G4S to taser anyone they thought looked uppity would depopulate the prefecture; and refraining from creating refugees would be just as contrary to British values as giving homes to those already liberated. Accordingly, Robert Goodwill and some chums of his are going to put up a "big, new wall", which will be made of smooth concrete and will have flowers and plants on the non-wog side so as to reduce any non-positive visual impact. Local residents, aid groups and the Road Haulage Association have all complained that it won't work; but Robert Goodwill clearly knows better, having been Minister for Wogs Out for six weeks without even feeling the need to visit Calais for himself. Robert Goodwill also defended the Government's record on helping child refugees (or, in Standard English, not helping child refugees) by claiming that Her Majesty's Government is trying to speed up the process. Fortunately for Conservative heartlanders with legitimate concerns, nothing does not become something just because the Government is doing it a bit faster than before. Nevertheless, there seems little room for doubt that Robert Goodwill is Mad Tessie's most appropriately-surnamed minister apart from the vole-brained Liam Fox.

Effective Intervention

In the face of several forthright demonstrations of legitimate concern over Poles in Britain, the Polish president has demonstrated a rather charming strain of black humour. Firstly, and apparently with a straight face, he asked Amber Rudd and the Imperial Haystack to do something about it. The response can well be imagined: the Haystack no doubt blathered something about the Prevent programme only applying to darkies, while Rudd probably responded with a pledge not to let British fracking firms undermine the Wawelska Cathedral. Evidently well aware of how seriously to take these two, the president then took the joke further by writing to the heads of the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches in Britain, who will no doubt be more than happy to bring their moral authority to bear by wringing their hands a little harder. It is as yet unclear whether the Polish president has taken up the matter with a popular singer, the Downing Street cat or Ed Balls.

Rustlings in the Undergrowth

Although Mad Tessie has made clear the extent of her concern for the environment by putting it into the charge of the gormless Andrea Leadsom, it seems that certain members of the Not Awfully Bright Party are being a bit slow to take the hint. Thirty-six MPs have written to the dead-eyed warden of HM Prison UK, urging her to demonstrate our independence from the Euro-wogs by retaining, and then some, all the green tape which the present Imperial Haystack used to gain so much innocent fun from ignoring. Under the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU throws about three billion a year at British farmers; the thirty-six would like to see this money repatriated from Britain to Britain and used for more worthy ends than subsidising people who just sit around owning land. In case Mad Tessie was unaware of it, the thirty-six point to the Conservative Party's glorious history of environmental protection, some of which occurred as recently as 1981. Contributions to the ecosystem's stability made during Mad Tessie's time at the top include the attempt to privatise the country's trees, the ongoing crusade against badgers, and the cuts to solar for the purpose of servicing the fracking boondoggle. Apparently such little hints were also too subtle for certain elements of the Parliamentary Not Awfully Bright Party.

Artisans of Mercy

Be not indifferent to those
Who lack their daily bread,
But go and lead them by the nose
Unto a poor sick-bed.

Be mindful of the poor folks' pain
And make it your one goal
To use it well and thus maintain
Your cleanliness of soul.

Make good use of the sinful wealth
That comes at your behest:
If you should suffer with your health,
Rush to the sinful West.

Let Jesus see His children laid
Beneath His lordly eye;
Let them not call for idols' aid -
Baptise them on the sly.

Do not ignore God's holy poor
Nor leave them in the lurch;
Much better to exploit them for
The glory of the church.

Kali Muggeridge

Polski Sklep

There may yet be consequences for Sir Philip Green over his plundering of BHS. The British Neoliberal Party has nothing against asset-strippers, of course; and stealing your workers' pension money to spend on fleets of luxury yachts is nowadays considered mere socio-economic prudence. But one of BHS's best-known sites has now been taken over by a Polish fashion chain, which will soon be handing out clothes to migrants as if they had a right to be here. The British Neoliberal Party has never much minded selling off the nation's institutions; but their preferred buyers tend to be Australo-American hard-working families. Allowing BHS Lebensraum to fall into the hands of a nation of benefit-claiming plumbers may be Sir Philip Green's one small yet fatal mistake in an otherwise brilliant career.

Moral Obligations

However jolly rah-rah Her Majesty's Government may be in creating refugees, it often suffers some small inhibition when it comes to dealing with them. Fortunately, no such handicap seems to be afflicting the present administration. A year after the body of a junior cockroach was washed up on a beach, it has emerged that the Government spent more than £100,000 on legal fees and "internal costs" to prevent four Syrians being reunited with their families. Perhaps Mad Tessie's boot-boys in G4S needed urgent protection from the physical threat. Although poverty tends to be a self-solving problem provided it lasts long enough and does not obtrude itself upon party donors, the Home Secretary has acted to resolve the situation: she has extruded a spokesbeing to blame the Government's inaction on those local authorities which the Government has spent the past six years depriving of funds. It seems likely that such dynamic and responsible actions will help almost as much as the hand-wringing by luminaries of the Church of England, which famously reacted to poverty in Britain some years ago by calling in the City of London police to hose the poor off the steps of St Paul's.

Not Backwards but Forwards to 1921

Brexit means Brexit and Britain means Britain, but Ireland does not necessarily mean Ireland. The David Davis publicist and sometime Minister for Brexit, David Davis, has had a bit of a blather in the Belfast Telegraph to reassure the natives that he and Adam Werritty and the Imperial Haystack have some idea what they are about and that they're not spending all their time in that comfortably padded lunatic asylum squabbling over their staffing arrangements. Davis, who believes that the border between the UK and the Republic of Ireland is an internal one, was at pains to assure the colonials that Eire will remain part of the United Kingdom and that the integrity of the Empire will not be compromised. Farmers in Northern Ireland will not be cut off without a penny until the Conservatives are safely in at Westminster for another five years. Free movement of labour will stop, but at the same time the border will stay open; and no doubt city authorities in Donegal, Meath and wherever (doubtless Davis has got his spads to check that they have cities in the Republic) will be only too happy to take over the necessary cockroach control functions from the corresponding authorities in Calais.